Kent | Define Kent at Dictionary.com Kent James, 1763–1847, U.S. jurist. 2. [rok-wel,, -wuh l] /ˈrɒkˌwɛl,, -wəl/ (Show IPA), 1882–1971, U.S. illustrator and painter. 3. William, 1685–1748, English painter, architect, and landscape gardener. 4. a county in SE England. 1442 sq. mi. (3735 sq. km). 5. an ancient English kingdom in SE Great Britain. 6. a city in NE Ohio. 7. a town in central Washington. 8. a male given name: from the Old English name of a county in England. ken knowledge, understanding, or cognizance; mental perception: an idea beyond one's ken. 2. range of sight or vision. verb (used with object), kenned or kent, kenning. 3. to know, have knowledge of or about, or be acquainted with (a person or thing). to understand or perceive (an idea or situation). 4. Scots Law.

to acknowledge as heir; recognize by a judicial act. 5. Archaic. to see; descry; recognize. 6. to declare, acknowledge, or confess (something). to teach, direct, or guide (someone). verb (used without object), kenned or kent, kenning. 7. to have knowledge of something. to understand. Old English 900 before 900; Middle English kennen to make known, see, know, Old English cennan to make known, declare; cognate with Old Norse kenna, German kennen; akin to can 1 Can be confused Examples from the Web for Kent Expand Contemporary Examples The science of intentional drug use for enhanced athletic performance is a boutique business, says Kent Sepkowitz. British Dictionary definitions for Kent Expand a past tense and past participle of ken Kent1 noun 1. a county of SE England, on the English Channel: the first part of Great Britain to be colonized by the Romans; one of the seven kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England until absorbed by Wessex in the 9th century ad. Apart from the Downs it is mostly low-lying and agricultural, specializing in fruit and hops.

The Medway towns of Rochester and Gillingham became an independent unitary authority in 1998. Administrative centre: Maidstone. Pop (excluding Medway): 1 348 800 (2003 est). Area (excluding Medway): 3526 sq km (1361 sq miles) Kent2 William. ?1685–1748, English architect, landscape gardener, and interior designer ken range of knowledge or perception (esp in the phrases beyond or in one's ken) verb kens, kenning, kenned, kent (kɛnt) 2. (Scot & Northern English, dialect) to know 3. (Scot & Northern English, dialect) to understand; perceive 4. (transitive) (archaic) to see Word Origin Old English cennan; related to Old Norse kenna to perceive, Old High German kennen to make known; see can1 Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd.

1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012 Word Origin and History for Kent Expand Old English, from Latin Canticum, Greek Kantion (51 B.C.E.), an ancient Celtic name often explained as "coastal district," but possibly "land of the hosts or armies." Related: Kentish. ken v. "to know," Scottish dialect, from Old English cennan "make known, declare, acknowledge" (in late Old English also "to know"), originally "make to know," causative of cunnan "to become acquainted with, to know" (see can (v.)). Cognate with German kennen, Danish kjende, Swedish känna. Related: Kenned; kenning . n. "range of sight," 1580s, a nautical abbreviation of kenning . "house where thieves meet," 1560s, vagabonds' slang, probably a shortening of kennel .

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper Slang definitions & phrases for Kent Expand Ken noun A conformist, conventional man; a man lacking any but bland typical characteristics: Mr Quayle has been called a sort of Ken/ Bergin, the male villain, is reprising his role as the Ken-doll monster of Sleeping With the Enemy [fr the male counterpart of the Barbie doll] The Dictionary of American Slang, Fourth Edition by Barbara Ann Kipfer, PhD. and Robert L. Chapman, Ph.D. Copyright (C) 2007 by HarperCollins Publishers. kent | Definition, meaning & more | Collins Dictionary a past tense and past participle of ken Collins English Dictionary. Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers Kent1 (kɛnt ) Definitions noun a county of SE England, on the English Channel: the first part of Great Britain to be colonized by the Romans ; one of the seven kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England until absorbed by Wessex in the 9th century ad. Apart from the Downs it is mostly low-lying and agricultural, specializing in fruit and hops .

The Medway towns of Rochester and Gillingham became an independent unitary authority in 1998. Administrative centre: Maidstone . Pop ( excluding Medway): 1 348 800 (2003 est). Area (excluding Medway): 3526 sq km (1361 sq miles) Collins English Dictionary. Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers Kent2 (kɛnt ) Collins English Dictionary. Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers Kent1 in American English (kɛnt ; kent) Definitions 1. James 1763-1847; U .S. jurist 2. ˈRockˌwell (ˈrɑkˌwɛl ) ; räkˈwelˌ) 1882-1971; U.S. artist Webster’s New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition, compiled by the editors of Webster’s New World Dictionaries. Copyright © 2010 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.

Kent2 in American English (kɛnt ; kent) Definitions county in SE England: formerly, an Anglo-Saxon kingdom (6th-9th cent . a.d.): 1,442 sq mi (3,735 sq km); pop. 1,509,000 Webster’s New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition, compiled by the editors of Webster’s New World Dictionaries. Copyright © 2010 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved. The English Administrative County of Kent The English Administrative County of Kent Kent Arms The Armorial Bearings (Arms) of the County of Kent Adjust the Kent map using controls or drag with mouse Map Centre Position: Lat , Long .

Map Zoom Level: - Icon Help (The external website above will open in a new window) Population and area summary of the County of Kent The County of Kent is located in The South Eastern Counties of England, it covers an administrative area of 3,544Km² and in 2001 was home to a population of 1,329,718 persons, that represents 2.71% of that of England and 0.02% of the population of the entire United Kingdom. More detailed information including visitor attractions and event venues in Kent is available on this site by following the links below to the Boroughs and/or Districts or follow this link to select a different County . Boroughs/Districts of the County of Kent Unitary Authorities and Metropolitan Areas may be displayed here as they are locations are historically associated with this county/region. Unitary Authorities and Metropolitan Areas are however self-governing and are no longer responsible to the County/Regional Administration.

Unitary Authorities Historical notes about The English Administrative County of Kent KENT in 1950 There is no way of dodging the old tag about Kent being "the garden of England." So let us agree at once that it is so. The label is right enough, so far as it goes. But the trouble is that it gives a false impression to people who do not know the county, or rather the ancient Kingdom of Kent. Only recently a North Country dales-man referred to Kent as "suburban." He must surely have once been down to Beckenham! It is really a matter for wonder that this county, which penetrates into the heart of London , the county through which every traveller to and from the Continent sooner or later must pass, should yet remain so untouched by such proximity and such traffic. All along the Weald, the great stretch of what was once the forest land of Anderida, between Sevenoaks and Ashford , sleeps on from year to year, century to century, with its natives still wholly rural in their way of life, their culture, and their tempo. There is no sign of suburbanity along the Weald.

Nor will it be along the mid-Kent Ridge, amongst the rich "dene" villages that marked the first subjugations of the primeval forest, and the rise of England's two principal industries, wool and iron. And certainly the other large division of Kent, the marshland of Romney , shows no sign of villa-dom. That contemptuous critic of the county may perhaps have been also to Margate; but Margate is in Thanet - the small nose that sticks out towards the Goodwin Sands. A slight disfigurement of the nose is not necessarily evidence that the whole person is corrupted. The faults of Kent are certainly not of an urban kind. On the contrary, the weakness both of the Men of Kent east of the Medway , and the Kentish Men west of that important river, is that they are so wholly rural in their lives, and so proud and prosperous in that rurality, that they have no time for cultural activities, or for a proper appreciation of the vast historical wealth of the land our of which they make their substantial fortunes.

On the historical side especially, this is a pity, for in the history of Kent there lies the explanation of why these farmers are somewhat different in their methods, and their land tenures, from their fellows in the rest of England. Their singularity, of course is affected by many factors; the geology and climate, for example; but principally the farmers of Kent are what they are because of their special origins, and the form which the drama of history took in its passage over their fields and hop-gardens. Let us look at the structure of the county, its position in relation to the rest of the island of Britain and the geographical differences which have divided it up into its distinctive parts. This view will partly explain why the present-day inhabitants of Kent are what they are, and do what they do. Geography, in fact, has been of immense significance in the county's history. Link with Europe To begin with, Kent is the nearest part of England to the mainland of Europe. It is the prow of the ship.

Practically everything that has come to England during the last several thousands of years, including the latest diabolical Teutonic inventions, has come to Kent first, either to be intercepted or passed thence to the rest of the country. One invasion Kent did escape. During the last great Ice Age it was one of the few parts of England left un-submerged beneath the ice cap that crept down from the North Pole. It escaped only by reason of the width of the Thames estuary, but that was enough to make it one, during the long hibernation, with the rest of Europe. It is no fanciful idea to believe that this has given Kent an ethnological venerability, a quality of time-wisdom that tinges everything in the county. Julius Caesar, when he came to Britain, noted in his Commentary that the inhabitants of Kent were as civilized as those of Gaul.

One can believe that they were disciplined by a racial memory, as well as by the fact, noted a thousand years after Caesar by William the Conqueror's historian, William of Poitiers, who wrote that "Kent is situated nearer to France, wherefore it is inhabited by less ferocious men than the rest of England." That still holds good to-day. The most noticeable characteristic of the Kentish folk is their tolerant kindness. To live in Kent is to be constantly aware of the European tradition, and of its root in the Roman Empire. One might equally well be living in Normandy, where the scenery, the domestic architecture and the nature of the people are comparable. All that is different now is the language - and the lamentable fact that grapes for the making of wine are no longer grown in Kent. But even that loss has its substitute in the culture of the hop, round which the economic life of a great part of the county turns. It is a rougher, paler substitute, but it involves much the same ritual and customs as does the cultivation of the grape-vine. The leaf is the same, and has the classical shape sacred to Dionysus.

We shall see in a moment how this similarity affects the natures of the people engaged in its cultivation. Other odd little survivals due to these geological and historical facts crop up again and again. For instance, the fauna of the county is remarkably rich and various; Kent has sixteen different kinds ants, and is the wealthiest of all the English counties in beetles and immigrant butterflies; while the great white snail, introduced by the Romans and cultivated in the grounds of their villas, is still found throughout the county, especially along the northern side of the Downs above the shores of the Thames, where the Roman civil servants lived two thousand years ago. The Weald Present-day life and economics in Kent are governed by certain elementary geographical facts. In the vast distance of geological time, a ridge of chalk heights, alpine in nature, ran east-west along the counties south of the Thames. Rivers therefore flowed from that watershed north and south, either to the Thames and its estuary, or to the Channel. They still do so, though the ridge has been eroded, decaying like a molar and leaving an inland plain now called the Weald which stretches from the Hampshire border through parts of Surrey and Sussex and on into Kent.

In Kent this plain is contracted by the green-sand hills to the south-west of the county. The North Downs run on through Kent, turning south-east to end at the "white cliffs of Albion" by Dover and Folkestone . The Weald proper is heavy clay, but it is fertile. Here the hop is cultivated, in the district east of Tonbridge running as far as Ashford , with the heart of the culture round about East Peckham and long the valley of the Medway approaching Maidstone . Many of the great brewing firms have their own hop-gardens in this district, run in a scientific way by horticultural experts engaged in constant research towards a disease-proof hop-vine. The seasonal processes of the culture are intricate and costly. A hop-garden is an expensive undertaking. But it is also a profitable one. Not only the men, but their families, too, are caught up on the work. At three periods of the year - first, for the stringing of the hop-gardens, second for "twiddling" or training the young shoots on the strings, and third for the picking - the country women have to join their men-folk in the gardens.

In March they go out to do the stringing. The men precede the women, some on long stilts, tie the strings to the top wires which are stretched permanently on the nigh poles: others lace the strings at lower levels. The women follow, pegging down the strings to the ground, and looping four strings with a band about four feet from the ground. The result is a funnel-shaped design, running away in diminishing perspective, with a geometrical precision that is wonderful to see. How do the women, who work quickly and apparently without measuring, achieve this precision? In the same way, probably, as the local builders who put up the circular oast-houses: by rule of thumb - it is the thumb of a racial genius! It costs about a hundred pounds to-day to string a four-acre hop garden. Then in May and June the women are out again, for weeks on end, "twiddling." Twiddling is training the young vine shoots, anti-clockwise, up the base of the strings.

It is a tedious job, but it occurs in the glory of the year, and the women appear to enjoy it, for it brings them together and they live a sort of community life during this period, going home in the evening sun-burned, to get the evening meal for the family. The young children of Kent learn early in life to help with the household chores and the cooking, for their mothers play a large part in the out-door work. If they did not, harvesting the hops would be much delayed. Picking, the final labour, it the one best known to the outside world. It begins at the end of August, and often goes on until the first week of October. It is a seasonal work which wrings the county dry, breaking into its ordered way of life with a bacchic fury. Man, woman and child are swept into the rout, which has a Keats-like abandonment about it. I have seen these sober, English countrymen working in the gardens with crowns of the hop-vine foliage tied round their heads. The reason is not a ritualistic or religious one. It is because they find such a headdress cooler than a hat, and one, too, which keeps the flies away.

But the effect is completely Theocritan. The number of local folk is, however, quite inadequate to the needs of the moment at hop-picking time. As a result there takes place an annual invasion from the East End of London, supplemented by pseudo gypsies from their winter quarters at Mitcham , Maidstone and elsewhere. There are usually over forty thousand of these invaders, for whom special camping arrangements are made in the hop-fields, and whatever the local folk think of their behaviour, they know that the work they do is essential. The invaders combine camping holiday in the country, for the whole family from the very old to the very young, with remuneration for hard work. The growing of the hop, with all the activities that it entails, it well mirrored in our English literature; but I know of no more vivid picture of it than in C. Henry Warren's A Boy In Kent, or in the poems of Edmund Blunden, whose birth and particular genius make him Kent's Laureate.

His bucolic poems spring from the same soil as the main tributes of the Medway ; those meandering streams, the Beult and the Teise, which wind their way through hop-gardens, luxuriant meadows and ironstone outcroppings. They pass water-mills, feed ponds where huge pike lurk, drop down weirs against which trout and roach dash themselves madly every spring. They shelter the kingfisher, the nightingale and the smaller wildfowl. All these things, so characteristic of the Weald in the flats and foothills below Maidstone , are embalmed for ever in Blunden's verse, which has the static quality of the countryside it celebrates. All this district, however, was once part of the vast forest that stretched for a hundred and twenty miles east to west from behind Folkestone right through the country into Sussex and Hampshire , while from south to north it was about thirty miles wide. Domesday Book has practically no records of settlements in this forest. It was primeval, consisting mainly of gigantic oakwood, under which fed the wild boar and deer.

Even as late as Henry VIII's time - the sixteenth century - a traveller from the south of the county has to come to London via Canterbury , a journey that took two days. There were no roads through the forest until the time came in the days of Elizabeth when it was discovered that the soil under that forest was rich in iron ore. For the following three centuries that part of England was its Black Country; but a sweet-smelling black - for the smelting of the iron was done by charcoal, produced from the seemingly inexhaustible supplied of wood in the forest. Seemingly, but not so in fact, for very soon we find that Parliament was passing laws regulating the consumption and replacing the consumption and replacing of timber. Even so, the depredation went on rapidly, until by the eighteenth century most of the forest had disappeared. Bits of it survive today, notably around Gouldhurst and Cranbrook . Along the ridge-road from these two handsome villages to Tenterden , one may see, stretching along gentle valleys east and west as far as the eye can reach, a sort of ghost-survival of that might forest. The people, too, have a sylvan character, in their ways of life and their homes.

The soil is magical still, and the cherries and apples grown in that district are the best in the world. All along this inland ridge that divides the Weald proper from the Romney Marsh and the sea there now run orchards, set above the frost line, and in the early spring this part of the county is a fairyland of blossom - cherry, plum, apple and pear. After, or often during, hay-making the local folk are doubly put to it to get the fruit in. They are helped again by visitors, usually the caravanners who come later in the year for the hop-picking. All are paid piece-work - for so much a bushel - and the Covent Garden lorries keep up a shuttle traffic during those busy weeks, running the fruit direct from farm to market. All this side of Kent farm life was formerly done by rote and superstition based on folk methods. Today it grows more and more scientific. The Fruit Research station at East Malling , with experimental orchards, is at the service of the farmers, sending out experts to advise them on methods of pruning, grafting, disease control, manuring and spacing.

During the war, when fruit was fetching such good, Government-controlled prices, the farmers were able to undertake big-scale experiments. Most of the Kent orchards were thinned, every other tree being taken out, many orchards cut down to the trunk and the trees re-grafted with more profitable, better-grade fruit. New orchards were set as soon as the compulsory growing of corn was relaxed. The result of this revolution in horticultural method is a reduction in the picturesque-ness of much of the fruit-growing country. The old, leaning and mossy trunks have disappeared. So, too, has much of the disease with them. In time this will mean larger and better supplies of fruit. These fruit, and hop-farmers of the Weald and the central ridge are specialists, but many of them today insure themselves against big losses (mainly by frost, the bug-bear of this particular king of farming) by doing a little general farming, in arable and stock. During the war, of course, the arable became the major activity, and the face of Kent was transformed.

The first crop of wheat, grown on fields many of which had been pasture-land for a century, was too light-rooted to maintain so abundant and full ear as that battle-year of 1940 yielded, and much damage was done by wind. Indeed, this wonderful soil can be an embarrassment, for it produces more harvests, both of fruit and corn, than the farmer can find labour to gather in. This odd economic problem is repeated in the north of the county, on the rich soil between the chalk downs and the Thames Estuary. That strip of country seen by travellers and mariners coming and going between London and the sea, so easily accessible by water, and removed from the dangers of the southern forest, became the residential quarter of the Romans during the four centuries of their highly civilized and even sophisticated occupation of England. It breaks through the hills at three gaps, by Ashford , Maidstone and Dartford ; and it opens out over Thanet to include the rich lands where Richborough and Canterbury (Rutupiae and Durovernum) were settled as the military and administrative headquarters of the colony. All this stretch of country is a paradise for archaeologists.

Neolithic, Roman, Saxon and Medieval relics are eloquent of a continuous story of human settlement. The Roman officials built their villas on the northern slopes, whence they trafficked between the two centres already mentioned, the Reculver (Regulbuim) and London (Londinium), along Watling Street, the first great Roman Road. The Thames shore off Reculver has receded a mile inland since then, for tessellated pavements, cisterns and arched vaults have been found as far out as Black Rock, on the bed of the estuary, while coins and domestic fragments from the period of Julius Caesar to that of Honorius are constantly being washed up by the tides. All this, the story of the past, is so abundant that it needs not a chapter, but a volume to itself. A Famous Shrine So, too, does the record of Canterbury - for three hundred years one of the most famous shrines in Europe. It is difficult to see in the quiet cathedral city of today one of the greatest centres of Christian ritual and ceremony, approached throughout the Middle Ages by a traffic or worshippers.

Between the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries its streets and hostels were filled with a concourse of pilgrims and the tradesmen who battened on them. Every nationality and social grade were represented. By the time Geoffrey Chaucer pictured the scene, it was becoming decadent and over-blown. Abuses had crept in - abuses which a little later Erasus and his friend Colet contemplated with such disgust. The genuine worship at the shrine of Becket had degenerated into a perennial faring totally commercial in both practice and purpose. I have not the space enough to write of Canterbury here. There is so much to say of this sacred place where the seed of Christianity was first planted in Britain in the sixth century. Nor could I attempt to describe the architectural glories of this city, as beautiful as any in Europe, without trying to keep a balance by writing of the Castle and Cathedral of Rochester , and of such parish churches as that of Cranbrook , "the cathedral of the Weald," or the little chapel of Stone-cum-Ebony, which contains an ancient Roman altar originally dedicated to the worship of the Bull, that grim forerunner of the Ram, or Lamb or God.

Great Houses And again there is the secular architecture: the great palaces such as Knole at Sevenoaks , with its three hundred and sixty-five rooms and fifty-two staircases; or the smaller Penshurst, where Sir Philip Sidney the poet and hero was born; or Leeds castle, which still stands in its moat near Charing , the pretty village where once the Archbishops of Canterbury had a palace (amongst many in the county) - the village that gave its name to a district in the heart of London. The Kentish architecture, the pride of town, village and country mansion, has been conditioned by the nature of the materials, all of local origin. Kentish ragstone and Betherrsden marble were used for the churches and many of the big houses. Red tiles and rose-coloured bricks were frequently made from clay near the sites of the cottages and oasts. Medieval building was lavishly timbered with oak beams, but these diminished in size and quantity as the price of wood rose during and after the seventeenth century. Conspicuous features of Kentish domestic architecture are the tile-hung or weather-boarded upper storeys of houses.

Brenchley, one of the most beautiful villages in the county, has samples of both. Chiddingstone (now National Trust property), Eynsford , Hollingsbourne , Gouldhurst , Cobham with its palace, Biddenden with its row of shops and seven-gabled weaver's house, Igtham with its moated mansion, Tenterden with its broad High Street - these are only the more famous of Kent's inland villages, the open country is dotted with manors and farmhouses of every period of English architecture from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Yet another unique feature of this county is the weather-boarded seaside building (dwelling, warehouse, fishing-shed) found in the villages round the coast, from Gravesend to Romney , with few surviving Martello Towers to serve as memorials to Napoleon's threat of invasion. The mention of Cranbrook again reminds us that this was the place from which the national economy of medieval England was so successfully augmented by Edward III, when he had the bright idea of more than doubling our national income by exporting not the raw wool (hitherto our principal commodity), but the manufactured cloth.

For this purpose he brought to Cranbrook expert Flemish weavers, who speedily affected the local life and culture with their greater wealth and civilized manners. For example, they at once re-built Cranbrook Church. There are still some half-dozen "weavers' halls" in and around the village. These halls, or houses, and typical of many scattered throughout the county. All of them are spacious, nobly planned works of renaissance domestic architecture. They survive today, as strong as when they were build some four to five hundred years ago, as reminders of the first emergence of England as a great economic force in the comity of Europe. Alongside these houses are a few that were built by the ironmasters of the Weald, though the centre of this great and now vanished industry was just over the border of Kent, in East Sussex . But Lamberhurst had one of the biggest foundries, from which the original railings round St Paul's Cathedral were forged at the end of the seventeenth century. All that remains today of those rich activities is an indicative place-name here and there: Hammer Pond, Colliers' Green, Forge Pond.

By the end of the eighteenth century a trade that had existed for two thousand years in Kent had come to an end. The spirit of the King's Forest has overlaid the memories of that great industry, making them no more than "a green thought in a green shade." Both weavers and ironmasters have disappeared, as the fulcrum of the wool and iron trades has shifted nearer to the new supplies of fuel and power in the north of England. The surviving industries of Kent are the coal-pits in extreme south-east of the county, and the cement works, shipbuilding and engineering that flourish alongside the prosperous market-gardening in north Kent, which feeds Covent Garden market daily. The coal-pits have mostly been developed since the 1914 - 1918 war, inland behind Deal . The product is a soft coal used for industrial purposes, and the mining is done through modern pits that neither disfigure nor soil the countryside. For example, Lord Northbourne's model estate near Deal carries on experimental agriculture within sight of the pit-heads. Round the pits are clustered garden villages to house the workers, whose labour brings a new source of wealth to the county.

Shipbuilding Industry The building of seaplanes at the mouth of the Medway (an industry which has recently been transferred to Belfast) maintained the tradition of the naval shipbuilding which has been carried on at Chatham and Rochester since the Middle Ages. Lambarde, the historian, writing in the sixteenth century, at the time when Henry VIII was co-ordinating and strengthening the naval force of the nation, said of Chatham and its fleet that "it presenteth itself, a thing of all other the most worthie the first place, whether you respect the richesse, beautie of the same; nor shipping any where els in the whole world to be founde, either more artificially moulded under the water, or more gorgeously decked above." It was at Chatham that Pepys, as Secretary of the Admiralty, carried on his good work of clearing up the muddle and peculation which had so reduced our naval strength that the Dutch fleet was able to penetrate as far as the Medway during the war with the Netherlands, causing havoc among the shipping there and panic in London.

At Maidstone , the capital of Kent, and in the coast towns north of it ( Dartford , Gravesend , Greenhithe and Northfleet), the major part of England's paper-making is done. Here, too, are large cement works. It is odd to see round the factories and installations acre after acre of market-gardens. This horticulture is so closely organized as to be more in the nature of a mechanical industry than a rural occupation. So, too, is the oyster dredging and culture carried on off the coast of Whitstable. This activity is in the hands of a Royal Corporation, administered by officers whose authority still has a medieval sanction about it. The famous "native" - the oyster of oysters - is not necessarily born there. Cultures - the young bivalves - are brought to the Whitstable beds from various parts of Europe, notably Portugal and Brittany, a special fleet of boats being maintained solely for that traffic. But the nature of the waters off the coast of North Kent, fed by iron and other salts brought down by the many small streams running from the Downs, fosters these foreigners along with the natives, and gives them the unique flavour that satisfies the gourmet.

No, not satisfies, for the oyster is like love or music, re-creating the appetite which it appeases. Cinque Ports The other marine industry of Kent is the general sea-fishing carried on round the coast since history began - and probably before that. Out of the wealth of the industry grew the confederation of the Cinque Ports (four of which - Romney , Hythe , Dover and Sandwich - are in Kent), a medieval organization for self-defence against rival fishers from East Anglia and from the European mainland. The Royal Charters granted to this of our trade organizations date back to the reign of Edward I, and they stipulate that the ports shall provide men and ships, in the King's need, to support the Royal Navy. To this day the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports acts as Governor of Dover Castle, and resides officially at Walmer Castle. Dover , with its great Norman castle, its naval and military position, its famous (and expensive) harbour, its towering Shakespeare Cliff, is world-famous. Kent is the gateway to England. Dover is the lock to that gate.

Ramsgate , Deal and Dover are the principal fishing ports of Kent, and their boatman provide the skill and courage to combat the dangers of the Straits and the Goodwin Sands. These mariners, who man the lifeboats, are celebrated in the annals of heroism. Coast Town Life Finally, there is the rest of the coast-town life, with the pleasure resorts that attract ozone-seekers from all over England. From Herne Bay on the Thames estuary to Dymchurch on the Sussex border, holiday towns lie right round the coast of Kent. They are maintained by a population of caterers, hoteliers, lodging-house keepers, staffs of convalescent homes and hospitals, who provide food and service for millions of visitors every year, with an industry that adds vastly to the wealth of the county. Folkestone is the gem of these resorts. It is worthy of a bluer sea than the Channel. I should call it the Antibes of the North, with its gay cliff gardens, its warm temperatures, its wonderful air. And there is Broadstairs , a village still, with recollections of Dickens, that genius whose childhood was spent principally at Rochester .

Pegwall Bay, just below Broadstairs , is the place where Julius Caesar probably, and St Augustine certainly, landed. Dickens's tales are coloured with the personality of Kent. But he is only one of many writers whose art was suckled by this queen of the English counties. I think of Kit Marlowe, son of a Canterbury shopkeeper; of Richard Barham, who laid the scene of many of his Ingoldsby Legends in the village where he was born, and from which his family took its name; of Geoffry Chaucer, greatest of them all; and, amongst present-day writers, Vita Sackville-West and Edmund Blunden, both poets who, when they sing of Kent, add greater depth, greater tenderness and reverence to their music, because of all that they recognize in the beauty, of past and present, in the county that has nurtured them. [Your user agent does not support frames or is currently configured not to display frames.] The books displayed above are returned using the search terms 'Kent'. *If nothing is found relating to these terms Amazon will display a selection of books from the general Best Seller list.

Selected UK Retailers Kent | county, England, United Kingdom | Britannica.com county, England, United Kingdom Frederick Edgeworth Morgan Kent, administrative, geographic, and historic county of England , lying at the southeastern extremity of Great Britain . It is bordered to the southwest by East Sussex , to the west by Surrey , to the northwest by Greater London , to the north by the Thames estuary, to the northeast by the North Sea , to the east by the Strait of Dover , and to the southeast by the English Channel The north-central town of Maidstone is the county seat. St. Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, Kent, England. Willhsmit Tonbridge Castle gatehouse (left) and mansion, Tonbridge and Malling, Kent, England. Clem Rutter, Rochester, Kent The administrative, geographic, and historic counties occupy somewhat different areas. The administrative county has 12 districts: Dover , Sevenoaks , Shepway , and Thanet , the boroughs of Ashford , Dartford , Gravesham , Maidstone, Swale , Tonbridge and Malling , and Tunbridge Wells , and the city of Canterbury . The geographic county comprises the entire administrative county plus the unitary authority of Medway .

The historic county includes the entire geographic county as well as eastern portions of Greater London, including all or most of the boroughs of Bexley , Bromley , Greenwich , and Lewisham . A line of chalk hills (the North Downs ) running from west to east forms the spine of the county. North of the ridge the land falls to the marshy and low-lying shore of the Thames estuary, and to the south there is an area of clays and sands forming a rolling wooded region known as The Weald . The long coastline of Kent is alternately flat and cliff-lined. The low Thames coast is bordered by marshes and islands (Grain and Sheppey), and farther east the former Isle of Thanet now forms part of Kent. There are chalk cliffs at Thanet at the North Foreland and again between Dover and Deal , but farther south is the low-lying area of Romney Marsh , which has emerged from the sea, in part by reclamation, since Roman times. In the extreme southeast is the shingle promontory of Dungeness . Romney Marsh, Kent, England.

Devon Because of its position facing the continent of Europe across the Strait of Dover, Kent has been subjected to numerous invasions and has attracted successive waves of settlement. Evidence of early Continental invaders is seen at Kits Coty House near Aylesford, a long barrow at Chilham, and Bigbury (a Belgic hill fort). Roman settlement began with the subjugation of the area in 43 ce. The chief Roman supply port was Richborough , and the administrative centre was at Canterbury , where Roman baths and a theatre have been unearthed. Early in the 5th century Kent was invaded by Jutes and Saxons, and it became one of the seven kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon Britain . In 597 the king of Kent welcomed the Christian mission of Augustine (later St. Augustine of Canterbury ). Augustine founded an abbey outside the walls of Canterbury, a monastery inside (where the cathedral now stands), and a second diocese (604) at Rochester . Ruins of a Roman fort on the grounds of Richborough Castle, Richborough, Kent, England.

Val Vannet After the Norman Conquest (1066), the Normans rebuilt Rochester and Canterbury cathedrals and constructed a number of castles, of which those at Dover and Rochester survive. In 1170 Canterbury Cathedral was the scene of the murder of Thomas Becket , the archbishop. Many pilgrims subsequently visited his shrine, and those of the 14th century were immortalized by Geoffrey Chaucer in his The Canterbury Tales . The cathedral at Canterbury, Kent, England. © Tony Baggett/Fotolia The Tudor monarchs established a royal palace at Greenwich, the birthplace of Henry VIII . Under the Tudors, in the 16th century, when defense of Britain’s shores became a preoccupation, coastal forts were built (e.g., at Deal), and naval dockyards were established at Deptford, Woolwich , Chatham and Sheerness. The Royal Greenwich Observatory was established in 1675. Sensitivity to the defense of Kent reached a peak in Napoleonic times and again in 1940 during World War II , when a German invasion was expected. Deal Castle, Kent, England.

Scientists Ponder Menopause in Killer Whales As the neighbouring metropolis of London grew, it expanded eastward into the historic county of Kent. In 1889 the present-day boroughs of Greenwich and Lewisham were incorporated into the new administrative county of London, and in 1965 the boroughs of Bexley and Bromley became part of the metropolitan county of Greater London as well. British Culture and Politics Rural Kent has long been known as the “Garden of England.” Fruits, especially apples and cherries, and hops are grown, mainly in the Medway valley and in north Kent. Market gardening is extensively practiced. Important arable crops include barley, wheat, oats, and potatoes. Romney Marsh, one of the world’s finest natural grasslands, is famous for its sheep, but a section of it has been plowed up for the production of spring flowers and bulbs. Industries include papermaking along the Darent and Medway, engineering and the production of chemicals along the Thames, and the production of plastics, bricks, tiles, and cement on the Lower Medway and Swale. There are oil refineries on the Isle of Grain and railway workshops at Ashford.

The suburbs of London continue to encroach on the farmlands of northwestern Kent, and such towns as Sevenoaks and Tonbridge lie well within the commuter belt of the capital. Britain’s entry into the European Economic Community (now the European Union ) in 1973 greatly strengthened links between the southeastern section of the county and the Continent by increasing Channel trade. The expansion of trade and the opening in 1994 of the Channel Tunnel , with a terminus at Folkestone , brought new importance to eastern Kent as a warehousing area and a focus of shipping and other transportation routes. Area administrative county, 1,368 square miles (3,543 square km); geographic county, 1,442 square miles (3,735 square km). Pop. (2001) administrative county, 1,329,718; geographic county, 1,579,206; (2011) administrative county, 1,463,740; geographic county, 1,727,665. Harbour of Folkestone, Kent, England.

Sebastian Maier Kent - definition of Kent by The Free Dictionary Kent - definition of Kent by The Free Dictionary Related to Kent: Kent State Kent (kĕnt) 1. A region and former kingdom of southeast England. Settled by Jutes in the fifth century ad, it became one of the seven kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy but was later eclipsed by the kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex. 2. A city of northeast Ohio east-northeast of Akron. Kent State University (founded 1910) was the site of a 1970 demonstration against the Vietnam War in which four students were killed by members of the National Guard. Kent′ish adj. A past tense and a past participle of ken . kent a past tense and past participle of ken Kent (kɛnt) n (Placename) a county of SE England, on the English Channel: the first part of Great Britain to be colonized by the Romans; one of the seven kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England until absorbed by Wessex in the 9th century ad. Apart from the Downs it is mostly low-lying and agricultural, specializing in fruit and hops.

The Medway towns of Rochester and Gillingham became an independent unitary authority in 1998. Administrative centre: Maidstone. Pop (excluding Medway): 1 348 800 (2003 est). Area (excluding Medway): 3526 sq km (1361 sq miles) Kent (Biography) William. ?1685–1748, English architect, landscape gardener, and interior designer Kent 1. Rockwell, 1882–1971, U.S. illustrator and painter. 2. a county in SE England. 1,538,800; 1442 sq. mi. (3735 sq. km). 3. an early English kingdom in SE Britain. ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend: Noun 1.

Kent - a county in southeastern England on the English Channel; formerly an Anglo-Saxon kingdom, it was the first to be colonized by the Romans England - a division of the United Kingdom Home Counties - the English counties surrounding London into which Greater London has expanded Canterbury - a town in Kent in southeastern England; site of the cathedral where Thomas a Becket was martyred in 1170; seat of the archbishop and primate of the Anglican Church 2. Want to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us , add a link to this page, or visit the webmaster's page for free fun content . Link to this page: View in context My scattered senses were soon collected as to that point, if I had; for I came to a stop in the Kent Road, at a terrace with a piece of water before it, and a great foolish image in the middle, blowing a dry shell. View in context We should then be well in those long reaches below Gravesend, between Kent and Essex, where the river is broad and solitary, where the waterside inhabitants are very few, and where lone public-houses are scattered here and there, of which we could choose one for a resting-place.

Question: What is the administrative centre of Kent?
Answer: Maidstone